Using open source in ecology and biodiversity research

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Day: November 9, 2012

Most open source GIS programs can open all most common, and quite a few obscure data format (thanks to the gdal library). What they can’t open is the ArcMap layer files (.lyr). A layer file defines the symbology used to draw the data when it is added to the display and stores information about the symbology, symbology classifications, labeling properties, scale dependency and definition. So what if a data layer is distributed with a layer file?Continue reading →

Read the whole vector layer
It allows you amongst others to easily import vector data layers from GRASS GIS into R using the function readVECT6(). This will import the whole vector layer. But what if you you only need to import the attribute table? Importing the whole vector layer would give unnecessarily overhead and would take (much) longer to import. Continue reading →